Author: admin

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard cautiously welcomed on Monday the idea of deepening relations with NATO, as the alliance mulls closer ties with the Afghan war ally and other partners.

“Australia will look at being engaged with NATO in a flexible way in the future,” Gillard told a news conference after talks with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the military alliance’s Brussels headquarters.

Rasmussen said he had shown Gillard a draft of NATO’s new “strategic concept” which leaders of the 28-nation alliance will adopt at a summit in Lisbon on November 19-20.

The NATO chief said a key element of the concept will be “a fresh approach to NATO partnerships with countries around the globe.”

“Australia will have the opportunity to deepen its relations with NATO,” Rasmussen said.

Australia has a military representative at NATO and the Australian military is formally consulted by the alliance on operations in which the country’s troops participate in Afghanistan.

Rasmussen wants to tighten NATO’s relations with key partners such as Australia, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand in the face of global threats such as terrorism and cyber attacks.

Gillard is on her first official foreign trip since taking over from Kevin Rudd in June. On Sunday, she visited Afghanistan where Australia has around 1,550 soldiers — the biggest non-NATO contributor to the war effort.

The Australian premier was in Brussels to participate in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) gathering leaders from 46 nations on Monday and Tuesday.

plans to unveil a long-awaited tablet computer this month which may begin to ship in March, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing “people briefed by the company,” the newspaper said the colour screen tablet is expected to be a multimedia device that will let people watch movies and television shows, play games, surf the Web and read electronic books and newspapers.

The Journal said the device, which has been the subject of speculation for years, will come with a 10- to 11-inch (25.4- to 27.9-centimeter) touchscreen.

The newspaper said the table would be unveiled later this month but did not say exactly when.

All Things Digital, however, a technology blog owned by Dow Jones, publisher of the Journal, said Apple had rented a San Francisco venue for January 27 to hold a media event and announce a “major new product.”

Britain’s Financial Times also reported last month that Apple had rented the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a space Apple has used in the past, but for January 26 not January 27.

Apple, the Cupertino, California, company behind the Macintosh computer, iPhone and iPod, routinely refuses to comment on products ahead of their release.

The Journal said Apple does not plan on shipping the tablet until March although “the shipping time hasn’t been finalized and could change.”

The newspaper quoted analysts as saying they believed an Apple tablet would be priced at around 1,000 dollars.

Apple is notoriously secretive about product launches and has declined to address the rumors concerning an “iSlate,” “iPad” or “iTablet,” which analysts have said may resemble an oversized iPod Touch or a low-cost netbook computer.

Tomalaris says that while the crowds will be drawn to see Lance Armstrong, the former champ and cancer survivor is unlikely to win the Tour Down Under.

“It’s not a course that’s conducive to his style of racing. But he’s here to give himself a test, he’s here to basically test himself on what is a pretty tough course for this time of the year,” says Tomalaris.

“Let’s not forget that this is the first race of the professional season and a lot of these guys, after Christmas and new year and having time off, they haven’t been on the bike for quite a while apart from training. This is the first race and Lance is here to test himself and he’s here also with his new Radio Shack team.

However, last year’s winner, Australian Allan Davis, says he’s not so sure that the six-stage race won’t suit Armstrong.

Davis says he’s expecting another strong performance from the 38-year-old cancer survivor, who came back from retirement at last year’s Tour Down Under.

“Full respect for Lance. I’m a big supporter and believer of what he is doing, not only for cycling but for his cancer research and fund raisers, I’m a very big supporter of that. But on the bike I have a pretty good opponent for him, Alberto Contador, I mean he has won the last two Tour de Frances he’s competed in,” Davis said.

Davis says after taking time off during the European winter, many riders won’t be as fit for the Tour Down Under as they will be for other competitions later this year.

Tomalaris is calling on Australians to show as much support for the Tour Down Under as French people show for the Tour de France.

“It is a cycling centre of the universe for a week here and if you don’t follow cycling, you don’t really have to. You can still come over here and enjoy the atmosphere and the racing,” he says.

“This is a replica of the Tour de France and for those who haven’t been to the world’s greatest bike race in July and probably can’t afford to go there, well they can come to Adelaide and experience something very, very similar without having to leave Australia.

Debt-laden Europe logged record unemployment on Tuesday and its core currency and shares plummeted amid a worrying industrial slowdown.

The unemployment rate hit 10.1 percent in April, its highest since the euro came into being in 1999 in just one of a series of blows on Tuesday to the eurozone economy after a brief lull last week in market pressure.

Almost 16 million people were out of work across the 16 countries that share the euro, the European Union said.

The numbers reached more than 23 million in the 27-nation EU as a whole, including non-euro giants Britain and Poland, 2.4 million more than one year earlier.

The euro sank to a new four-year low of US$1.2115 on concerns about the European financial sector’s ability to weather the region’s debt and deficit crisis.

“We have no doubts on the future of the euro. The euro is one of the most stable currencies in the world,” European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters during an EU-Russia summit.

European stocks fall

However, European stock markets also fell sharply, as market reports said the European Central Bank had warned that eurozone banks could face new asset write-downs.

Meanwhile, fresh data from purchasing managers further showed that private sector manufacturing output growth slowed in May to a level not seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008.

Leading economy Germany recorded a “significant slowdown” in its growth rate, with the overall trend reflecting “the speed with which uncertainty surrounding the sovereign debt crisis appears to have hit business activity,” according to Markit research (sic) boss Chris Williamson.

Analysts noted that the number of new jobless in the eurozone, at 25,000 in May, was the smallest monthly rise since last November, and well down from the previous month.

However, “the rise in the number of eurozone jobless spiked up to 287,000 in the first quarter of 2010 from 137,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009,” London-based IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer underlined.

“Despite April’s much reduced rise in unemployment, we remain doubtful that the eurozone labour market is on the brink of turning around,” he stressed.

The latest figures show US unemployment running at 9.9 percent, and Japan’s at just 5.0 percent.

Varying unenmployment across Eurozone

Throughout the EU, only Germany recorded a fall in unemployment over the full year, from 7.6 percent to 7.1 percent.

Deficit-plagued Spain, with a 19.7 percent rate beaten only by Latvia, saw unemployment among under-25s reach a dizzying 40.3 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

The threat of nasty tailwinds from the world’s deepest post-war recession lurks behind a sharp slowdown in growth.

“All countries saw a deterioration in growth of output and new orders,” said London-based Markit of the manufacturing brakes, particularly painful in recessionary Greece.

“The extent to which manufacturing growth slowed in May has been exceeded only once in the survey’s 13-year history, in the aftermath of Lehman’s collapse,” they said referring to the September 2008 bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers.

There was some good news in the data, relating to the currency fall.

Export growth was “running at a near 10-year peak,” said Williamson, and his figures actually indicated a rise in manufacturing employment for the first time in two years.

“The sharp depreciation of the euro will also sustain activity, particularly in Germany and in Italy which export more outside the zone than inside,” stressed BNP Paribas analyst Clemente De Lucia.

However, Paris-based De Lucia also warned that serious belt-tightening in most European countries – fearful of a battering the way Greece was brought to its knees – as well as tumbling stock values and weakening consumer confidence data over recent months “are likely to drag down private consumption.”

The ADF has said legal processes are continuing into the killings of six Afghans, after SBS’s Dateline found family of the slain children had not been officially quetioned – despite the incident happening over a year ago.

Four children, a teenager and an adult died in the mission in Oruzgan Province in February last year, which the survivors say wrongly targeted them over the search for a Taliban leader.

The ADF has since told AAP that Act of Grace payments had been paid to family members, and defended carrying out the practice despite the delayed legal action.

“Defence uses this mechanism to make Act of Grace payments in order to respect the cultural norms in Afghanistan.

“To act in any other way would undermine well established local customs and practices.”

The survivors were tracked down by Dateline. One of them, Zahir Khan, was sleeping in the family compound that came under attack. His sister, his brother and his brother’s children were killed.

Khan claims he was forced out at gunpoint, hearing gunfire and explosions coming from the next room. He was then taken away and interrogated, the troops asking him if his brother was a member of the Taliban.

Zahir’s sister-in-law Shapero claims she was in a room that was attacked.

“My oldest son was cut to pieces, my daughter was shot in the head and chest and she died,” she tells Dateline. “They were meant to be in the other house. Instead of the house on the hill, they attacked us.”

Dateline has presented its findings to the Australian Defence Force and asked it to explain its troops’ actions.

The ADF says it’s now placed the case before the Director of Military Prosecutions and ‘it would be inappropriate for any public comment to be made about the investigation of the incident or about the progress of the DMP’s deliberations.’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed settlement building in east Jerusalem will continue, despite a diplomatic spat over the issue with key ally the United States.

Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas responded by saying he would not return to peace talks without a complete settlements freeze.

The US State Department declined to comment on the hawkish Israeli premier’s remarks, saying it was awaiting a ‘formal’ response.

“Construction will continue in Jerusalem as this has been the case over the past 42 years,” Netanyahu told members of his Likud party.

Israel occupied mainly Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

Last week’s go-ahead for 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in the east of the city infuriated Washington, coming during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden aimed at promoting renewed peace talks with the Palestinians.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington said bilateral relations have hit a 35-year low.

“Israel’s relations with the US are facing the most severe crisis since 1975,” the Yediot Aharonot newspaper quoted ambassador Michael Oren as telling consuls in the United States.

US calls in 1975 for a partial Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, then under Israeli occupation, ignited a major crisis between the two allies.

Last week’s announcement sparked fury among the Palestinians, who view east Jerusalem as their capital and see the growth of Israeli settlements as the main obstacle to the establishment of their promised state.

“There will not be any negotiations with the continuation of settlement activity,” Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina quoted him as saying on Monday.

“These policies do not create an appropriate atmosphere for the resumption of the peace process.”

Senior US officials including Biden and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have slammed both the new construction and the announcement’s timing as insulting and damaging to peace efforts.

On Monday State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters Hillary Clinton had asked Netanyahu for a formal response to US demands.

“When she outlined what she thought appropriate actions would be to the prime minister, she asked for a response by the Israeli government. We wait for the response,” Crowley said.

Still, he uttered the first conciliatory words in recent days from the US, reaffirming that “Israel is a strategic ally of the US and will continue to be so.”

And Netanyahu won backing from Obama’s political opponents.

“In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends,” said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives.

The March 9 green light for the new construction in east Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo district came just two days after the Palestinians had reluctantly agreed to hold indirect negotiations with Israel.

Direct talks collapsed after Israel launched a devastating 22-day military offensive in December 2008 against the Islamist Hamas-run Gaza Strip aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli troops wounded 10 Palestinians on Monday as they opened fire on dozens of students hurling stones at a West Bank checkpoint to protest against Israel’s actions in east Jerusalem, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.

As tensions mounted, Israel barred men aged under 50 and non-Muslims from entering Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound for the fourth day running.

The compound is Islam’s third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is also Judaism’s holiest site as the location of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Police and demonstrators have clashed in and around the compound on the past two Fridays, and police fear Monday’s reopening of a 17th century synagogue a few hundred metres (yards) from the compound could reignite protests.

The Islamist Hamas movement ruling the Gaza Strip declared Tuesday a “day of rage and alarm” over the opening of the Hurva synagogue, calling on Arabs and Muslims to “come to the aid of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa.”

“Israel is playing with fire and touching off the first spark to make the region explode,” exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal warned.

The United States rebounded from recession in the third quarter, posting its strongest economic growth in two years as government stimulus spurred consumer spending.

After four negative quarters, the world’s largest economy grew at a seasonally adjusted 3.5 per cent annual rate in the July-September period from the second quarter, the Commerce Department said.

The increase was the first since the second quarter of 2008 and the strongest expansion since the 2007 third quarter, when a US subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global financial crisis that hammered the world economy.

The expansion followed an unrevised 0.7 per cent decline in the second quarter.

The department’s first estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP), a broad measure of the country’s output of goods and services, was slightly higher than the 3.2 per cent reading expected by most analysts.

President Barack Obama welcomed the data as “an affirmation that this recession is abating and the steps we’ve taken have made a difference.”

Unemployment a major hurdle

But, he warned: “We have a long way to go to fully restore our economy, and recover from what has been the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression.”

“The benchmark I use to measure the strength of our economy is not just whether our GDP is growing, but whether we are creating jobs, whether families are having an easier time paying their bills, whether our businesses are hiring and doing well.”

While a recession is widely regarded as ended by one quarter of economic growth, in the United States the economy will not be officially out of recession until it has been declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Unemployment remains a key hurdle to sustained recovery. The jobless rate rose to a new 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September and is expected to hit double digits. Since the official start of recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed has climbed by 7.6 million to 15.1 million.

“The recession is over, but don’t be fooled by today’s number — the underlying rate of recovery is weaker,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

Economy ‘on life support’

Behravesh said that underlying growth was closer to 2.0 per cent and predicted momentum would only pick up in the second half of next year as consumers and businesses grow more confident.

After shrinking a sharp 6.4 per cent in the first quarter, the world’s largest economy has been on life support from the federal 787-billion-dollar emergency stimulus and other support measures.

The third-quarter rebound was led by consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of US economic activity and added 2.36 percentage points to GDP growth.

Consumer spending surged 3.4 per cent after a 0.9 percent drop in the second quarter, a rise the department said “largely reflected” auto purchases under the government’s popular “cash-for-clunkers” program in July and August.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that, excluding the auto sector, consumption grew at a 1.0 per cent annual rate.

Core inflation rate falling

“With disposable income falling due to continued job losses and declining hourly wages, and the reversal of the surge in car sales, consumption growth will almost certainly be negative in the fourth quarter,” Baker said.

Other leading drivers of third-quarter growth were business inventories and home building.

Biosecurity Queensland is managing another case of Hendra virus infection, after test results on a deceased horse came back positive for the virus.

Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer, Rick Symons, said a private vet last week reported a suspected case on a property outside Bowen in north Queensland to Biosecurity Queensland after attending a sick horse on the property.

“The vet attended the horse over several days last week and samples were taken and forwarded to Brisbane for testing,” Dr Symons said in a statement.

The horse was euthanased on Thursday.

Control procedures were put into place when the sample results came back positive on Tuesday night, Dr Symons said.

“There is one other horse on the property, which is healthy,” he said. “A third horse on the same property died one month ago but we do not have any samples to test.

“The property is under quarantine.”

The resident of the property has been informed of the test results.

Vets ‘wearing protective clothing’

Dr Symons said there were a number of horses on an adjoining property and Biosecurity Queensland officers were working with the owner to assess if they had been exposed to the horse that died most recently.

“Staff will also speak to a small number of residents in the immediate area today and provide the latest information about Hendra virus,” he said.

It is the 13th known incident of Hendra virus infection since 1994.

Rockhampton vet Alister Rodgers died this month after catching the virus from an infected horse he treated near Rockhampton on July 28.

Dr Symons said it was understood the vets who attended the Bowen horse had been wearing appropriate protective clothing.

“Following the recent tragic events surrounding the Hendra outbreak at Cawarral near Rockhampton, there is a greater awareness amongst vets and horse owners of the risks associated with Hendra virus,” he said.

“We encourage vets, horse owners and the community to be vigilant and report any suspected cases of Hendra virus to Biosecurity Queensland and, most importantly, to take appropriate precautions when handling any sick horse.”

The London Olympics face a “tight” financial situation, with only 194 million pounds available to cover any new risks in the run-up to 2012, a parliamentary committee warned on Wednesday.

The Committee of Public Accounts also raised concerns about how organisers LOCOG intend to raise 400 million pounds from ticket sales while balancing its commitment on affordability.

“The position is tight, with no room for complacency and limited flexibility to respond to new problems as the Games approach,” said committee Chairman Edward Leigh.

Construction of the Olympic Park in east London is on time and within the 9.3 billion pound budget, the committee noted. It praised the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) for controlling costs and finding savings across its programme, especially after the collapse of private funding for the Olympic Village and media centre during last year’s credit crunch.

But of the original 2.74 billion pounds of contingency, only 1.2 billion remain, and all but 194 million of that is currently earmarked for known risks.

Unforeseen costs continue to arise, including a recent 276 million pound bill to secure the Park after construction.

Staying within budget also depends on receiving about 600 million pounds of receipts from the Olympic Village.

LOCOG aims to raise the 2 billion pounds it needs to stage the Games through sponsorship, merchandising and ticket sales, and has attracted 70 percent of that total so far.

Tickets do not go on sale until next year, but the committee called on LOCOG to publish now the principles on which ticket availability and prices would be determined.

It said it was “reasonable to assume” tickets for a family of four could cost about 100 pounds, with prices varying according to each event.

The committee also urged LOCOG to establish a contingency fund to protect against failure to raise the funds.

The government aims to repay 675 million pounds of the 2.1 billion pounds the National Lottery has put up for the Games through future profits on the sale of Park land and assets, but the committee noted there was no guarantee on the value and timing of that payment.

Responsibility for security in certain areas has yet to be resolved, such as the “grey space” between the transport hubs and Park venues, the committee said. It called on the government to make clear who has overall executive authority.